Exposure to Violence, Coping Strategies, and Diagnosed Mental Health Problems Among Adults in a Migrant-Sending Community in Central Mexico

Abstract

Deadly violence has spread throughout Mexico, affecting the well-being of citizens. What is the impact of this violence on the daily lives of Mexican adults? Building upon the stress process model, we used a mixed-methods approach to examine relationships between multiple indicators of exposure to and fear of violence and four diagnosed mental health outcomes, as well as self-rated mental health, in a Mexican community using the Survey of Health and Mexican Migration (456 surveys; 49 interviews). The multivariate models provide evidence that perceptions of insecurity are associated with diagnosed depressive episode, agoraphobia, alcohol abuse, a total count of mental health conditions, and poor self-rated mental health. Past victimization is associated with anxiety. Stress and coping behaviors did not formally mediate these violence–mental illness associations. The qualitative results confirm that residents fear violence and cope by adjusting their personal behaviors. These results foreshadow the emergence of mental health conditions as a critical public health concern for Mexicans living under the threat of violence.

Keywords

Mexico Violence Mental health Stress Insecurity

[The violence situation is] honestly very bad, there have been a lot of dead people in the past five years. There are men who are not from here, and they extort people, and they kill people things like that used to happen only at night- you couldn’t go out after 9:00 pm - but now they even kill people in the middle of the day, you don’t even know what’s going on now.

Canudas-Romo, V., Aburto, J. M., García-Guerrero, V. M., & Beltrán-Sánchez, H. (2017). Mexico’s epidemic of violence and its public health significance on average length of life. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health,71(2), 188–193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar